[vitus]

> Not going to get into terroir other than to say that to reduce it solely to the soil type is the wrong way to look at it.

We're agreed on that front. My comment about limestone was to present one scientific aspect of terroir as _I_ understand it (which is to say, as a casual wine drinker recalling something I'd heard from a winemaker some years back).

That's a fair point about a lot of varietals being very heavily coupled to places of origin, and that's especially true for the big names that we've been discussing. But a white wine from the Alsace region (for instance!) could be a Gewurztraminer, or a Riesling, or something else entirely. (That said, I wouldn't expect an Alsatian white to be an Italian varietal...)

(https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/alsace-wine-region/ suggests a pretty even split between 4 different main varietals, with a tail.)

[veggieburglar]

Alsatian wines would typically be labeled with the varietal on the bottle, for just that reason- Alsace is known for a variety of world class white wines.